Back in the early Nineties, a group of superstar creators rose to prominence at Marvel. They practically reinvented storytelling in comics, breaking a lot of rules that the established writers, artists and editors at Marvel believed at the time were vitally important to telling good comic-book stories. Their art was, for the most part, totally different from the style that Neal Adams and Jim Aparo had popularized, and frequently broke rules of anatomy and perspective. Their stories shook up the established status quos of many series, introducing overt anti-heroes who grew to dominate the landscape of comics (like Cable and Venom, to name two quick examples.) The older guard of editors who ran the company didn’t really understand why these younger creators were popular; they didn’t even like the books they were publishing, in some cases. But they sold like hotcakes, they were incredibly popular with Marvel’s target audience, and the young men seemed to know what they were doing.

Then, almost literally overnight, the superstar creators all quit. Worse, they started their own competing company. To say that this caused some problems at Marvel would be a titanic understatement.

In essence, Image changed all the rules for what creators were allowed to do on a comic. Because Marvel’s editorial staff looked at the Image books and saw nothing but crap. Whether it actually was crap is almost irrelevant to the conversation; the point is that Marvel was put into the position of trying to emulate Image, and they patently did not understand what made Image books popular and held the comics in question in no small amount of contempt. To them, “make it more like Image” meant “make it louder and shittier.” And they proceeded to do just that. This is not to say that there were no good comics in the Nineties, but Marvel did make a lot of mistakes in their attempt to imitate the Image creators’ style, because they were deliberately trying to do bad comics in the mistaken belief that this is what their audience was into at that point.

I won’t go over the mistakes in detail, but I will mention enough to (hopefully) forestall people coming to the defense of these books. Ben Grimm wearing a giant metal bucket on his head because Wolverine had disfigured him. The Wasp as a literal insect woman with yellow skin and antennae. Teen Iron Man. The Clone Saga. X-Cutioner’s Song, a story with a denouement that is literally incomprehensible to modern readers because they were writing dialogue related to Cable and Stryfe’s origin without having actually agreed on what that was yet. The Legacy Virus, a plotline that managed to last six years without ever actually going anywhere. The Upstarts and the Gamesmaster, ditto. Sabretooth, the White Queen and Mystique all joining the X-Men within months of each other. Joseph, a Magneto clone who never had a point or a purpose beyond being in the series. X-Man, a spin-off book with no central concept and a character whose origins were a convoluted nightmare. Wolverine losing his adamantium claws and slowly mutating into a thing that looked like a feral weasel wearing a bandana over his head. Captain America wearing power armor. Force Works and Fantastic Force. The Crossing. Starblast. If you haven’t had enough yet, I could probably dredge up some more.

The point is, Marvel was at this point desperately flailing for a direction. They literally had no idea what would appeal to their audience, their creative vision was completely undercut by self-doubt, and they had made a number of major, seemingly irrevocable creative missteps. Onslaught, a character who they’d already introduced as the main villain behind their next crossover, was quite literally nobody–behind the scenes, the only decision that had been finalized was that they needed to follow up the Age of Apocalypse with something big, and they needed to start selling it right away before the people who’d been reading that crossover drifted away. There was no planning, no cohesion, no direction, nothing but throwing shit against the wall to see what stuck.

In that light, it’s amazing how well ‘Onslaught’ turned out.

‘Onslaught’, the storyline, probably wasn’t intended as a metaphor for the direction that the company had taken the last five years. For that matter, neither was Onslaught, the character. But it worked perfectly for that. Onslaught was the ultimate evolution of the pointless heel turns, the random and unmotivated shock plots, the endless raising of the stakes and the unearned “big moments”, all wrapped up in Liefeldian armor and given a life of its own. His whole origin was tied up in the biggest, most pointless, least comprehensible and most off-model moments in the post-Claremont era of the series, and when he finally broke free of Charles Xavier, his host, it felt strangely appropriate. It was as if everything bad about the Nineties had broken free and given itself flesh, and was stalking the Marvel Universe in an attempt to inflict its awful, poorly thought out paradigm shifts on every single character and series.

In that light, the character’s bastardized mess of an origin actually made sense, as did his shifting and incoherent goals. He was the living embodiment of everything bad about Nineties Marvel, of course he was going to be pointlessly convoluted and inconsistent! Again, I’m not saying that any of this was intended by the writers on the series or the crossovers, but it fit the metatextual concept of the series so well that it almost bleeds out of the cracks. When the heroes of the Marvel Universe finally defeat Onslaught, not through brutality or pointless violence but through nobility and self-sacrifice, it feels like they’re actually taking a stand for everything that superheroes are supposed to believe in. They’re saying, “No, this is what we’re about. Doing the right thing, no matter what the cost.”

And on that level, ‘Onslaught’ really did work. It was a Viking funeral for everything shitty about Nineties comics, wrapping up the X-Traitor plot and tying off the bloody stump of all the attempts to rewrite Xavier as a manipulative bastard. It ended by almost literally throwing all the crappy Nineties versions of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four onto a massive bonfire, burning away Teen Iron Man and the Malice Invisible Woman and the disfigured Thing and the what-the-fuck-was-that-even-about Thor and allowing us a full year of real time to forget it all like a bad dream. It allowed the Image creators to write Marvel’s flagship titles for a full year, just to show us all that they really had no idea what to do with any of them beyond simply aping other people’s ideas less well. (‘Heroes Reborn’ really was the point where Image ceased being taken seriously as a threat to Marvel and DC. They remained a solid company, and have gone on to do some really good work, but 1997 ended talk of the Image style being the new paradigm for comics.) The only thing that would have made it better was if Peter Parker and Ben Reilly had fallen into the ‘Heroes Reborn’ universe together, and come out as a single character.

And Marvel did some really interesting things around the edges of the ‘Heroes Reborn’ event. For a full year, they told stories in a Marvel Universe without the Avengers and the FF, and they seemed to actually be thinking about what that might mean instead of just using it as the starting point for another goddamn crossover. This was where the Thunderbolts started, for example. When they did bring back the Avengers and the FF, it was with some actual talent behind it, although Waid’s ‘Captain America’ and Busiek’s ‘Avengers’ and ‘Iron Man’ clearly worked better than Lobdell or Claremont’s ‘Fantastic Four’. The beginnings of Marvel’s resurgence under Quesada came in the wake of ‘Onslaught’. It didn’t all come at once; the X-books were still suffering from the deeper lack of direction caused by the departure of long-time writer Chris Claremont, a problem that wasn’t even solved when Claremont returned to the books a few years later. But in a lot of ways, the fever had broken.

‘Onslaught’ was everything we thought we wanted out of comics in 1996. If nothing else, it deserves credit for snapping us out of that.

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Oh, man, Onslaught. As you note, right after the Age of Apocalypse–those were pretty much the only major storylines I ever read as a teenager. I missed X-Cutioner et al. I didn’t pay much attention to the Legacy virus. But between Lobdell and Nicieza . . .

I loved Onslaught as the climax of the X-Traitor storyline–and how nicely that had tied to the Age of Apocalypse and its never-displaced Bishop. The moment Xavier realized the truth . . . just terrific.

What I never liked was the origin. You mention it as convoluted but I don’t remember it that way. What I remember is that Xavier was pissed at Magneto for tearing out Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton, and so Xavier ‘mind-wiped’ Magneto. Put him in a coma, blank-slated him, etc. IIRC, the origin was played such that, when Xavier mind-wiped Magneto, some tiny bit of Magneto “broke off” and became part of Charles Xavier, and that was the kernel of Onslaught.

Thing was: totally unnecessary. The origin of Onslaught could have so simply been “Xavier used his power to cause damage to another man, a man he’d once trusted and called his friend, because that trusted man did something heinous to one of Xavier’s students–and Charles snapped.”

I remember that scene in Xavier’s study when he was reflecting on the situation and thinking about his dream of mutants and human beings coexisting, and I remember very vividly wanting that to be it for Charles. Wanting him to finally say, “You know what, fuck you. You and your hatred and bigotry. We have sacrificed ourselves and fought for you over and over again, and this is how you regard us? You viewed me only as a monster; hear me roar.”

And with that Xavier becomes the most powerful villain in the Marvel Universe.

I actually thought it had been sort of prepped for that, given how Age of Apocalypse was all about the world without Charles Xavier. They could have totally gone for “World where Charles Xavier turned bad.”

I don’t know how that fits or conflicts with your Image hypothesis. I never read Image, or, I think, Liefeld. The best thing about Liefeld is the website with the top 20 worst Liefeld drawings (I may be misremembering).

The problem with this thesis is that plenty of the crappy stuff continued after Onslaught. We even got new crappy stuff in the form of Heroes Reborn. It may have been the point where we got fed up with ’90s Marvel, but it wasn’t the end by a long shot.

@Michael P: I’m including ‘Heroes Reborn’ as a positive consequence, though, because it was the first time the crappy stuff was universally recognized as crappy. The big reaction to the announcement of ‘Heroes Reborn’ was, “Unbelievable! Marvel is finally giving in and admitting that the Image guys know more about comics than they do!” The big reaction to the actual books was, “Wow. These are lousy.” It was the first time everyone admitted that the emperor had no clothes, and it ended the Image style’s dominance over comics. That was worth a year of crappy out-of-continuity Captain America and Avengers to me.

I sort of drifted out of comics around 1990/1 and didn’t get dragged back in until a friend introduced me to The Ultimates, so I missed out on that decade of ‘Kewl’ excess and out of all proportion shittiness masquerading as superhero stories. And it was a good few years after that that yet another friend picked up an issue of Heroes Reborn Avengers from a bargain bin and forced it upon me. It contained some drivel about Kang going after the Avengers to impress Mantis, but what I really remember was thinking “Wow, this is what The Ultimates would have been like if Marvel had done it back in the 90’s.”

The one-shot that serves as the climax of the event and bridge to Heroes Reborn honestly works well enough. It’s kind of emotional, even as it suffers from the solution being “All the characters run into a big yellow light”.

I actually liked Malice Invisible Woman. I think it’s common fan knowledge nowadays that the Invisible Woman is the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four, and I think that stems (at least partially) from just how thoroughly she beat the rest of them during her stint as Malice.

First, I’d like to say that I really enjoy your view on this time and character. It’s the most positive description of the thing that is no longer named that I have ever seen.
Second, could you give your view on Marvel as it is today? I recall that you mentioned that you would no longer read marvel comics, wither for the reboot or how they flip off creators, I cannot recall. However, Marvel nowadays (to me) has sunk back down to nineties levels of pain and misery. This is just my opinion, of course, but having a villain take over spider man and spend quite a bit of time showing us how much better this evil version is (saying that peter would let a little girl die and having Ock lay a smackdown on the ghost screams of character one upmanship), as well as seeing their responce to Avengers Academy and Runnaways (Wow, these characters have a decent fanbase. Kill them all! And that Sentinel kid too!) leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Make mine independent.
Third, did Onslaught ever make a comeback? Can’t keep a bad trend down, after all.

I actually liked Malice Invisible Woman. I think it’s common fan knowledge nowadays that the Invisible Woman is the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four, and I think that stems (at least partially) from just how thoroughly she beat the rest of them during her stint as Malice.

Yes, but they are generally thinking about the original Malice storyline from back when John Byrne was good, not the crappy ’90s sequel that largely involved Sue cutting holes in her costume and getting pissy at everyone.

I’ll admit it, I liked Onslaught and think it would still hold up relatively well on a reread, not just as a metatextual rebuttal to the Image founders but as an actual story of its own.

The build-up might not have been planned, but makes as much sense as if it had been. As crossover-worthy villains go, “Xavier and Magneto amalgamated” is firing on all cylinders, both a credible threat and a personalized trauma. It pulls together lots of aspects of the Marvel Universe naturally. It was used as a way for characters to take on their own personal demons, like Sue Storm actually fighting Malice, or have some long-overdue cooperation between them. The sacrifice in the end was really meaningful, at least by comic book standards. A few scenes in the miniseries genuinely gave me chills.

Second, could you give your view on Marvel as it is today? … This is just my opinion, of course, but having a villain take over spider man and spend quite a bit of time showing us how much better this evil version is (saying that peter would let a little girl die and having Ock lay a smackdown on the ghost screams of character one upmanship)

Deltarno, Onslaught’s getting ready to make a comeback. It’s been established in Uncanny Avengers and Future Foundation that Scott Summers killing Xavier has triggered a nightmare dystopian future where Red Skull, Doom, Anhillius, Kang, and three other unnamed yet villains will combine to recreate Onslaught and bring about the Days of Future Past timeline

Onslaught was created by Bob Harras to serve as a new “cosmic” threat to the X-men. The crossover stuff did not factor into it until the decision was made to co-opt the entire storyline to set up the Heroes Reborn stuff, which was LITERALLY eleventh hour stuff.

Mark Waid pitched Xavier as Onslaught and wanted him to be Xavier gone Dark Phoenix. Lobdell didn’t like that, forcing the attachment of the lame plot point of Magneto’s “darkness” infecting Xavier and causing Onslaught to be some sort of Xavier/Magneto hybrid. Harras tossed in the X-Traitor junk to wrap up that plotline, as Harras refused to do what was planned with Gambit being the traitor.

It was one of the main reasons why Waid quit the book, the editorial inteference, which basically got worse after Onslaught. Indeed Onslaught is widely seen as the last gasp of the X-Books after the early 90s resurgence of the title to popularity as far as being a jumping off point for most fans

Also, the whole Malice/Invisible Woman thing had LONG LONG LONG been resolved. It was a short term storyline and lasted about eight months.

And furthermore, Bob Harras flat out forbid the Spider-Man writers from switching Ben with Peter in terms of ending the Clone Saga right before the crossover (as was plan), because he didn’t want the resolution and restoration of the one true Spider-Man upstaging the X-Over and Heroes Reborn, causing Dan Jurgans to quit the book in disgust.

@Jesse Baker: Yes, Onslaught was created by Bob Harras as the next “cosmic” threat to the X-Men, but crucially, the character was already being worked into the books before they finalized who he/she/it would actually be. This resulted in a number of inconsistencies in his origin and abilities that were papered over later. (The famous scene of the Juggernaut, semi-conscious, muttering about Onslaught, was written when nobody knew who the character actually was or what they could do.)

And yes, I’m aware that the “Malice/Invisible Woman” thing had been resolved. It was there as an example of the kind of pointless transformations of existing characters into “dark” antiheroes that was going on during the era, not a specific plot problem that needed to be resolved by ‘Heroes Reborn’. That was Ben Grimm’s bucket head.

The decision to delay the return of Peter as Spider-Man wasn’t the only reason Jurgens quit ‘Sensational’–he was also very unhappy with editor Bob Budiansky, and the decision to delay Peter’s return was more the final straw than anything else–but my point was never about the timing of the decision, only the in-universe explanation. They never had a back-up plan to bring back Peter, because the change was intended at the time to be permanent. Throwing them both into the ‘Heroes Reborn’ universe for a year, and bringing them out as one person, would probably have worked better than, “Ben melts.” The timeframe is not really relevant to that rampant “wouldacouldashoulda”.

And yes, I did mention that the X-Books continued to stagger a long time after ‘Onslaught’. But it, and ‘Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return’, was a turning point for a lot of series, like ‘Avengers’, that were floundering. It still feels to me like most of the Marvel Universe turned the corner there, even if the X-titles were still struggling for a few years longer.

“…tying off the bloody stump of all the attempts to rewrite Xavier as a manipulative bastard”
Didn’t they keep those sorts of plotlines going afterwards? I seem to recall Vulcan only came into existence years later, and he’s pretty heavily bound up in that sort of “PROFESSOR X SENDS TEENS TO DIE FOR HIM” thing.

Pennyforth makes what followed sound kind of like DC’s 52. Which is a very good thing.

And on the subject of Vulcan and characters who throw Professor X under the bus, might I suggest Danger? Her origin entails Xavier knowingly enslaving a sentient computer so that he could upgrade his gym. Basically she’s terrible.

So, Onslaught was good, because it was REALLY bad? As opposed to giving credit to folks like Kurt Busiek, who took the dregs of the story (plus Heroes Return) and made something good?

No. I’d say Onslaught was good, which is all the more notable due to its weak foundation. Alternately, you could say that Onslaught is much better than one would have expected it to be, regardless of whether that rises to the level of “good” or not.

The main problem with Onslaught (and the Entity and earlier Xavier goes bad thingy which killed MILLIONS of people in the Microverse) is that in a shared universe you can’t follow it to its conclusion.

No matter how many times he goes bad and how many people he mind-wipes, manipulates or kills Xavier will always end up back in the school heading the Xmen with his crimes hand-waved away.

Which is why I almost wish DC and Marvel would adopt a 10 year reboot plan, let the universe go to its natural conclusions and then restart.

SIlverHammerMan- What really sucks about Danger is that her origin was impossible. The story made out that the Danger Room had been like that for years, that this was some long term crime of Xavier’s. But post Operation Zero Tolerance the X-mansion had been completely stripped of all tech. There was no Sh’iar Danger Room anymore.

In fact Joss’ initial run with a fake Hellfire Club, X-men tech turning on them and needing to track down Xavier is very similar to a run that started with X-men 360 featuring fake X-men, X-men tech turning on them(Cerebro) and needing to track down Xavier